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Over-ranking teams with great records is the consensus, but it means on the sliding scale of resume vs "better', the polls are way too far towards the resume end.



All I would request voters to do is give a 50/50 split to resume and who would win if they played right now at a neutral site.  But when you rank teams that way, it opens you up for criticism from the less valid consensus.  Ugh.

One way to address the schedule/win total bias would be to eliminate all the wins over teams who are not P5 (equivalent).  Then, some team that is 6-1 now might be only 3-1.  Georgia would be 4-1, and you might strike the Vandy win and just count "decent wins".

Or you could break out "quality wins over good opponents" to show LSU is 3-1 and many other teams are now 0-1 (Georgia).

Anyway, I worry very little about polls these days.  Midseason polls are vague indicators of something, perhaps letting you know that some team out west is having an apparently good year.  I would not have realized Cincinnati was undefeated if I had not taken a quick glance at a poll.

I really can think of no reason to worry about the polls, at any stage of the season.  The AP says blah blah and a weekend comes and often the rank ordering shifts because of upsets.  There are reasons to criticize the polls of course, and the main reason not to bother is that they do not matter.

At all.

There’s no reason to worry about them. I doubt the people who make them would tell you to worry about them. 
But damn do people worry about them. 

And I think Purdue ahead of Texas is a shining example of how dumb that methodology is.  I’m much more interested in facts than opinions.  If we took a poll right now on who we think would win on a neutral field between Purdue and Texas the opinions would be all over the place with no way to prove who was right.
What is the argument for Purdue over Texas at this point?

It’s not really an argument. They’ve played similarly difficult schedules. Purdue has a slightly better scoring differential, thus, a gap. 
What OAM is slightly overlooking is he’s placing modest value on the order of these things, which is usually overstated. The gap between those two teams is 0.44 points. So the Boiliers would be a half-point favorite in a neutral field by this metric. And I don’t know that is that much of a reach. 
Now there’s two interesting elements to this. For one, we probably understate the impact of schedule on record, granted we treat schedule as one flowing number, which is often not super helpful. It also opens the door for a Mid-Major to hammer its schedule with such ferocity it gets nice and high here. Which I don’t mind, but does irk some. 
In the end, I’m not really for treating rankings as power rankings. I’m not for using poll logic either. 

How in the wide wide world of sports do you get the entire O-line and not get at least one RB?

Ed Zachery, the better team doesn't always win

I'm not sure how Washington grades better than Ozigbo

The stats don't add up and I was at the game and my eyeball says Ozigbo played better

Devine Ozigbo 12-152; 2 TDs  receiving 3-25; 

M. Washington 14-109; 1 TD  receiving 2-1

Washington must have picked up some blitzes very well or some downfield blocks